Sustainability, Recycling Footage, and YouTube Annotations

One of the frustrating aspects of my job is that I often walk away from a series of interviews with HOURS of good material. People who are passionate, knowledgable, and know how to speak intelligently about their area of expertise are what make my job fun and easy. I always feel as if I'm betraying them a bit by having to cut their thoughtful comments down to sound bites, and that our conversation together is somewhat wasted if I can't publish it to the world.

Last week I did a piece that had great interviews but the total amount of material was far too much for a showcase piece, so I tried YouTube's new "Annotations" feature to link from within our showcase news piece to the more in-depth interviews from the guests. My yield, as it were, went up from 4 minutes of video to about 25 minutes of really good material, and it is, in a sense, self-editing. If you're interested in learning more, great. If not, it doesn't get forced on you or take away from the snappy promo. 

This is going to be a fantastic feature for the kind of work I do at the University – I'll be interested in seeing what other assuredly more creative ways YouTube producers put it to work. For now, here's the finished piece - feel free to interact!

  
Click Here to Watch in Higher Quality.